LG high-end flagship, rollable phone coming early 2021

Aside from the LG V60 ThinQ, all of LG’s 2020 smartphones could be considered less than premium, even if they had premium prices. Both the LG Velvet and the eccentric LG Wing, despite their pretty designs and out of this world features, technically fall on the mid-range tier when it came to specs. There might be some questions regarding the company’s ability to still produce a high-end device. The good news is that, according to rumors, LG does have one slated for the first quarter of 2021. The bad news is that those same rumors don’t paint an inspiring picture for the rest of LG’s phones.

LG launches a handful of phones each year, most of them barely making a blip on people’s radars. LG hasn’t made any new high-end premium flagship since early this year, stopping its old practice of releasing two flagships a year with the retirement of the G series of phones. That leaves the V series as the company’s only flagship, though there may have been doubts if it could even keep that line alive.

According to The Elec, LG will indeed launch a new flagship in the first quarter of 2021. Codenamed Rainbow, this will allegedly follow in the footsteps of the LG V60 and most likely run on a Snapdragon 875. What other features it will, however, the news site remains silent.

What will be more interesting is LG’s next Project Explorer phone, codenamed Project B. In line with the unconventional Project Wing and its swiveling second screen, Project B is believed to be one of if not the first rollable phone in the market, coming around March next year. LG already has rollable TVs so it isn’t exactly far-fetched.

Unfortunately, the site also claims that most of LG’s other phones will be outsourced to ODMs. That even includes the next LG Velvet that is part of LG’s new “Universal” smartphone series. This pretty much suggests that the company is slowly winding down its smartphone operations to focus on an extremely limited number of models that it will be making itself. Whether that will actually improve its sales figures for 2021 is, of course, something only time will be able to tell.